Lettuce Leaf Soup with Pork

JulesMay 22, 2014

Pork and Lettuce Soup

Tom Jued Pak Gaat Kao

I have just eaten this actual bowl of Lettuce and Pork soup. It’s a delicious, light, and delicate flavoured low calorie soup so it’s great as part of a calorie controlled diet. A lovely fresh soup, nice to eat as a light lunch but more commonly added to the tables with several spicy dishes as a palate refresher.

This is a great Thai soup recipe to have in your repertoire because it will compliment almost any Thai meal.

The five flavours of Thai cooking are spicy (pet), sour (brio), salty (kem), sweet (waan) and bitter (kom). These flavours are always combined one way or another in Thai food to produce dishes of startling intensity that burst onto the taste buds.

This soup is described by Thais as “Jeut” or bland in English because it is not one of the five and is generally supped between spicy dishes to refresh the palate.

There is an out-take at the end of this video Khwanjai being a little mischievous!

Wash spring onions and chop into about 1″ long, chop coriander leaves together, (we use the stems also but keep them separate) and wash lettuce leaves, cut to about 1-2″ square(ish)

Cooking:
Pour water into a saucepan and bring to boil. When boiling, add coriander stems, salt, seasoning sauce, stock cube stir until dissolved.
Coriander/cilantro stems can be eaten and give a lovely aroma and flavour to the soup stock.

Take the pork and form into small balls (a bit less than 1″) and place into boiling water leave to simmer for 4-5 minutes.
Then add lettuce leaves boil until lettuce is soft.
Then add spring onion, coriander stir 2-3 times, turn off heat because it’s done!

Serving Suggestions:
Serve hot, can be a delicious meal on its own or more usually served as a shared extra at the table to compliment something spicy. May we suggest our Pork Red Curry delicious with Jasmine rice and a side salad of fresh crunchy veggies, lettuce, cucumber and green beans or perhaps some beef curry?